Human Experiences, Proximity, Augmented Reality and the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things Will Change….The World!!!!

The Internet of Things is about to transform retail, work, industries, life at home, life at school…Pick your industry.

Choose the part of your life that will be transformed. And then say, in a deep booming voice… “IN A WORLD…” and fill in the blank with whatever rocks your, um, world.

Use the first 16 seconds as your soundtrack for reading this post:

Seriously, we don’t actually care what HAPPENS in that world, it’s the fact it’s happening to the whole damn world that matters!

So grab your grains of salt because the hype machine was in overdrive today.

In A World…Forbes Thinks IBeacons Will Transform….Tradeshows!!!!

Over at Forbes, where they still insist on calling iBeacon an “Apple technology” (Apple might be getting it RIGHT but it doesn’t mean they’re first, or the only ones)…they’re touting Bluetooth LE as a world shaker.

His conclusion? Shopping will become more efficient, tradeshow attendees will become more productive, we’ll be able to toss away our security badges at work, and we’ll never lose our luggage.

OK, seriously – with a title like that you’d think we could get a bit more insightful than lost luggage and being more productive at tradeshows?

In A World…Wired Thinks The Internet of Things Will Transform Coffee At The Office

Puneet Pandit of Glassbeam piles on over at Wired with a vision of connected devices that makes a visit to the water cooler more exciting:

Even water coolers can be connected in IoT, making a trip to the water cooler smarter than ever. The water cooler (coffee machine etc.) can remember personal preferences, be voice and motion activated, even deliver drinks on demand without the wait (cutting down on the proverbial water cooler chatter).

He does provide other examples of transformation…but I remain confused as to why everyone thinks traffic jams will become ancient history. The only thing that will really happen is that all the people with apps will be in ONE traffic jam, and everyone else in another.

They produce handy little devices that are given to employees so that management can remotely monitor how much time you spend talking in meetings, your body language and how much time you spend hanging out in the next cubicle (hat tip to W David Stephenson for the info).

“…the badges rely on infrared sensors to know when you are clustered with other people in a meeting or conversation. While they don’t record conversations, they capture data about how often you talk versus listen, how frequently you interrupt people, and your tone of voice.”

Yeah – that’s the kind of world changing technology we can all learn to love!

We Need Some New Headlines

We’ve got some serious headline dissonance going on.

It really doesn’t help to visualize a future on the Internet of Things when the coming revolution is typified by complicated tech solutions that can be mostly solved by looking out the window: “yeah it looks like rain” or “wow, looks like heavy traffic ahead, let’s get off at the next exit”.

Those aren’t the signs of a revolution, they’re signs that we haven’t yet started to bring our imagination to The World Ahead.

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